Investigations
by AccioJosh
Summary: It's 2005 and Harry works for the Ministry in a new Magical Crime Investigation department. When he is suddenly requested to go to the States to investigate a high-profile murder, he is surprised to find the prime suspect is Seamus Finnigan. (SLASH)


**Title**: Investigations, Part One  
**Author:** **acciojosh**  
**Characters:** Harry, Seamus, Ron, Hermione, Susan...  
**Pairing: **Harry/?? with references to Harry/Zacharias  
**Rating:** R, but maybe NC-17 for descriptions of violence (and possibly smut sometime, but ... we'll see ;o)  
**Summary:** It's the year 2005 and Harry Potter is lead investigator for the Ministry's Magical Crime Investigations Unit. When a murder is committed in the States, he doesn't see why anyone thinks he should travel all the way there for the investigation until he sees who the prime suspect is; Seamus Finnegan. The crime is being investigated by the United States Magical Law Enforcement department as the victim is the Senator of Massachusetts and high-profile, which can only lead to serious trouble for Seamus if he is guilty. He expects a quick determination of Seamus' innocence, however what he finds is far more intricate than anything he's dealt with...  
**Warnings:** Our favourite blond Hufflepuff died in the war, and Harry is now single.  
**Notes:** I want feedback from _anyone_ who reads this, so please if you read it, just say 'read it, liked it' or something to let me know. Thanks everyone!  
  
_**Unsigned Owls**_**_  
  
_**In a quiet corner of Level Two, between the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and the Auror Headquarters lay a small broom closet that had once actually housed brooms and other muggle cleaning items for the squib team that had been hired for maintenance several years ago. Said closet was now the headquarters of the Magical Crime Investigations Unit, a devision of the D.M.L.E. headed by Harold James Potter, aged twenty-four, single with a 'lightening-bolt' shaped scar over his right eye and a pair of spectacles on his nose. Having been charmed to be about the size of a small house with cubicles and desks enough for twenty and a lab off the back for processing, a smaller office off the side for Harry and an interogation room to the opposite, the M.C.I.U. was well-known for being the bastard child of muggle-born integration into the running of the Ministry of Magic. When it had first been proposed by the newest Minster of Magic, there was a small protest lodged against it until it was announced the department would be run by the Wizarding world's hero.  
  
On this late July day it was currently snowing outside of the windows that adorned each wall, a scene that was emphasized by the extremely low temperature in the room and the lack of fires in the stoves. Several of the witches and wizards were wearing heavy cloaks whilst others appeared to have forgotten the cold and worn light, summer cloathing and were currently blue and had chattering teeth. Though some were bustling about with things to do, others were huddled together for warmth.  
  
From the head's office came a sudden shouting not unlike one would expect to hear from a American muggle police drama when the chief finds out the lead detective went and blew up a shopping mall to stop a rat problem.  
  
"I DON'T CARE _WHY _YOU THINK IT SHOULD SNOW IN JULY! I DON'T EVEN CARE THAT IT _IS_, BUT IT'S FREEZING DOWN HERE AND WE NEED YOU TO TURN UP THE HEAT!"  
  
At the moment the voice came echoing off the walls, all movement stopped and everyone began to cheer in emphasis of Harry's pronouncement.  
  
"I 'ope 'e's got it in 'is 'ead to go down 'ere and transfigure 'em inta newts if they don' do it," said one slightly broken-looking wizard with a frog on his head to a witch wearing a blue sweater with a giant 'G' crocheted onto the front, whose hair was as red as an Irish woman's and whose face looked about ready to break into a smile.  
  
"I think he'd do it if someone suggested it," she answered. "I might just have to make mention." Her face broke into a slight smile before she moved on toward Harry's office, the folders she was holding still clutched tightly in her hand. As she knocked on the open door, Harry looked up from the Howler he was sealing and he smiled.  
  
"Ginny, thank God. Can you get this to Hedwig pronto? I need--"  
  
"We all heard," she cut him off, grinning widely. "These're just in from Neville. Says the toxicology indicates one point two percent intoxication, but there was an unknown substance found along with the contents of John Doe's stomach and he'll need more time for research." Her business-like tone was underlined with a friendly commonality that came from knowing Harry forever. It was something that only close friends picked up on, because most people thought she was a bitch and didn't bother giving her the time of day unless it was required.  
  
"Did he do the--"  
  
"Yes, and it was indeed rape, though the perp apparently used a condom because there was no semen found in the rectum. We found traces of a fibre indicitive of silk, though not your regular silk; it seems to be from a very rare species of moth found only in Japan that might make it highly tracable."  
  
"Excellent."  
  
"Hermione's pregnant."  
  
"What?" He looked up from the paperwork she'd brought with an expression of a man who was looking at a train speeding toward him. "Damn it, Ginny! Why do you tell me things like that like that?"  
  
"Like that, like that? Interesting. I wonder if your use of grammer is redundant or repetitive." She rubbed her forefinger along her chin as if in thought, then ducked when an ink-blotter was thrown at her. Said blotter broke a frame that had sat upon the bookshelf behind her, and she turned wordless to point her wand and repair it. "Tsk, tsk. Temper, Harry."  
  
He stood up and moved to join her, to see the photographic Harry and Zacharias both coming back into the frame of the picture. "Sorry 'bout that," he said softly, running his finger along the glass over Zacharias' image before replacing the frame on the shelf. A moment or two passed before he finally moved back around his desk.  
  
"It'll be four years now, won't it?"  
  
"Next week; Tuesday. Susan and I are going to have dinner at Horatio's, then fly over to his parents' place for some sort of 'cleansing' that his mum read about in a book on Native American customs." His voice was gruff and it was easy to see he was holding back deep emotions, so Ginny quickly changed the subject.  
  
"There's some bloke waiting for you in the interigation room, by the by. Says he's from the U.S.M.L.E."  
  
"Really? Well why didn't he head over to _dimly_ first?" Harry's team had started calling the D.M.L.E. 'dimly' shortly after said department had started calling them 'mac-muggles' as they were the only department in the Ministry currently using muggle techniques for investigation. It was still a sore subject around here even after three years.  
  
"Says he wants to see you personally."  
  
"Right then, as if I don't have fifteen cases already open and about ten families waiting to find out why Uncle Filius suddenly died for no apparent reason, I'll just drop everything to see some idiot from America." He let out a very aggreived sigh and frowned when Ginny just shrugged and left his office. "Bloody hell," he said to the picture of Susan, Zacharias and himself that sat on the left corner of his desk, just under the oil lamp, then stood up and made his way over to interigation.  
  
He found himself faced with a guy that was what everyone in England stereotyped American cops to look like; over-weight, not very tall, thinning hair and a white shirt with a half-undone tie that had a few too many donuts dropped on it to be worth wearing anymore. His face was so plain Harry wondered if he'd be able to pick him out in a line-up, but seemed anxious enough to be meeting Harry. Most surprising about him was his almost muggle-appearance, which wasn't something Harry was used to.  
  
"Hullo there," Harry said, extending his hand. "Harry--"  
  
"Potter, yes, I know! I'm very excited to meet you, Mr. Potter."  
  
"C.I. Potter, if you don't mind," he added tersely. He was used to people thinking his fame or age allowed them freedom from his rank, but he'd well earned it and wasn't about to let some pithy detective from the States have freedoms with it.  
  
"Oh, yes. Sorry, sir." The man straightened up and lost his school-boy smile, all business now. "Harold Maloney, sir. Detective Harold Maloney, that is." He smiled nervously and shuffled his feet, running his chubby fingers over the back of the chair. "Um, well, I've come in regards to a murder, sir," he finally added in response to Harry's silence.  
  
"Well what kind of murder could possibly bring you all the way to London?"  
  
"It appears to be a classmate of yours, sir. My cheif thought you'd be personally interested in the case."  
  
"Where's the paperwork?"  
  
"Um, well, I brought a disc with all the data, but I haven't seen any computers around here..." His voice trailed off and he looked ready to faint if Harry suddenly started to yell. Left with the impression that the this man's chief had sent him simply to be rid of him, he sighed and rubbed his temple.  
  
"We have a few computers in the lab." Without further word, he stood and made his way towards the back where the lab had been annexed and didn't even turn around to make sure the American was following. When he opened the door he found a rather flustered-looking young man of about nineteen wearing a hospital-green smock and gloves that were covered in blood and a disturbed frown. "Nathan, we need the computers in here. Are you about through?"  
  
"I dunno, sir. This body's so mangled I can hardly figure out what pieces go where, sir. Might take days."  
  
"Well get Macnair and Tonks in to help you after they're done with that O'Donnely fellow."  
  
"Oi, sir, there's another one..."  
  
"Yes Bradshaw, I know how terrible an incident it was. Please, clear out."  
  
"Sir," Bradshaw said and was gone with a flick of his wand.  
  
Harry turned to find Maloney standing behind him, panting and clutching his chest. "Mr. Maloney, you seem quite out of shape."  
  
"Yes, sir, just out of the hospital from a heart attack, sir."  
  
Harry eyed the donut spillings and raised an eyebrow. "Well, interesting that. Where's this disc you've brought me?"  
  
The breathless man pulled out a CD case and handed it to Harry. It was labeled, "File 12-753501, 7/14/05," in handwriting that looked very maticulous. Harry envied the person their abilities with a pen for a moment before popping out the CD and feeding it to his computer, whose flat panel monitor suddenly brightened at being paid attention to again. It was only a few wizards on staff who were willing to touch the thing, and it was a nightmare finding the right charms to make the thing even work, so it was mainly used for graphic enhancement and photo manipulations, and even then only by the people who had been deemed the 'muggle-trained' staff.  
  
When the CD auto-played, it opened a program that seemed designed for confidential document viewing, and very highly encrypted documents at that. It immediately prompted Harry for a thirteen-digit password and a thumb-print verification of his identity, which caused him to raise his eyebrow again.  
  
"I assume the password is here somewhere."  
  
"Um, well, I believe you were supposed to receive an owl on that, sir."  
  
"Well I--"  
  
"Harry, I almost forgot." Ginny's head popped through the doorway and her hand appeared with a letter in it. "This came for you when I went to send the howler."  
  
"Ah, well then." He took the envelope and opened it to find a short note explaining it was the password written by the same hand who had penned the file number. There was no signature and no greeting, just the note and the password. After entering it in, he picked up the hand scanner they normally used for fingerprinting corpses and suspects and presses his thumb to it.  
  
The screen flashed 'IDENTIFICATION VERIFIED: Level Two Clearance Authorization accepted' before switching over to a presentation.  
  
"Hello Mr. Potter," said a dark-skinned man now adorning te screen. He had wire-rimmed glasses and a tight haircut, his wide nose and lips in proporation to his face gave him a handsome visage that Harry admired for a moment. "My name is Thomas Hutchinson, Chief of Police in the town of Framingham, Massachusetts. As you may be aware, in the United States our police and crime organizations are not seperated by muggle and wizarding departments, so you'll pardon me if I'm slightly unfamiliar with all of your practices, however I have been briefed on some of the major points.  
  
"As my detective may have told you, Senator Malcolm Brady of Massachusetts was recently killed in his home here in Framingham. In cooperation with the FBI and the State Police, I've come to the conclusion that the death was caused by a combination of magical and muggle techniques. Due to the high-profile of this case, President Kerry has authorized us to use whatever means necassary to find out the reason and the nature of this murder. We have to hurry before the press gets wind of it as we don't need a world-wide problem with exposure.  
  
"The reasons we've contacted you, which I'm sure you're wondering is due to the fact that the suspect we've captured is a classmate of yours from Hogwarts, one Seamus Finnigan. He appears to have had his memory tampered with and there is a whole mess of things we can't even begin to explain. Since you're the leading expert on muggle-wizard combination murders, President Kerry and Governor Romney felt it would be prudent to have you on the case. The added bonus of your having roomed with the suspect is only secondary." The screen altered to show pictures of a man laying in a pool of blood and gore in a rather posh living room, seemingly naked and quite dead.  
  
"I've included my phone number with the documentation provided, and I've been told that charms were used to seal the offical file docket along with the CD, which should be appearing for you as this finishes playing." On cue, the files appeared before him on top of the CD case that he'd left on the countertop. Picking them up and opening to the crime scene photos, which he realized were only still because the subject of the photos was dead. It was something he was used to, but somehow it still caused a rather sick feeling in his stomach each time.  
  
"I'll expect to hear from you as soon as you finish going over the file. Please remember this is a top-priority case and we need your response immediately. Thank you."  
  
Once the file finished, the program informed him the CD would self-terminate and so it did; smoke issued from the cd-rom and when Harry opened it, worried it might damage the computer he found that it had simply turned into smoke and not actually blown up or set fire to itself. Sighing he stood up and walked back to his office.  
  
"This isn't going to be a good week," he said to Ginny who was in his chair and looking through his mail. The American officer trailed in shortly after him, his breathing labored and his fat stomach rolling to and fro. Ginny turned a little green and immediately looked away. "I'll need you to clear my schedule for the next few weeks. Tell the--"  
  
"He's already been alerted. I received these," she said, holding up what looked like plane tickets. "For you and Neville, it seems." She looked perplexed, but continued. "Also, the Minister said that no one is to know about this but you, so I'm to be charmed before you leave."  
  
"Right. You," he said to the American. "Go back to the States. Ginny, is there anything else I need to know before your memory is altered?"  
  
"Just that I hate this shite, and I really wish you'd find another assistant."  
  
"You're the only one I trust to do the job," he said with a sardonic smile. "Besides, you make the best coffee." She hit him at the running joke and then made a face as he pointed his wand. After a moment, her expression softened to a blank one and she seemed lost for a moment. "So I'll be taking my holidays early this year. I'll be in Massachusetts visiting some mates for a few weeks, so post-pone my appointments. Thanks for letting the Minister know. I'll be off to pack. I'll keep in touch by owl."  
  
"Um, right," she said, somewhat nervously before rushing off to follow orders. "Have a good holiday," she added over her shoulder, business-like again.  
  
"I'm sure I won't," he muttered, waving his wand so that all of the personal pictures of Zacharias flew into his trunk, which had suddenly appeared in front of his desk. "It's never fun putting your friends in jail."


End file.
